SHP+ is excited to continue our mission of bringing awareness to the unsung craftspeople behind advertising films. We would like to help them share their new techniques, their secrets, their impressive skills. We would like to co-LAB-orate with you, by relaunching the LAB+ series.

The original idea for the LAB+ column was to bring the technical side of advertising filmmaking into the light. To reveal and explain new technical achievements of the latest released technologies, to take you behind the scenes with interesting filmmaking approaches and techniques. The ambition for LAB+ was to help the audience and clients better understand the complex process of computer graphics on filmmaking for advertising.

We reintroduce the LAB+ with the first article provided by JUICE and their series of ‘JUICY WORKSHOPS’ that perfectly fit the purpose of the column described above. Enjoy reading it and please share articles with us about your work! If you don’t have any articles, let us write them for you! Let’s co-LAB-orate!

JUICE is a renowned CG and post production studio based in Poland with offices in Japan and plans to open soon in Shanghai, China. It is a powerhouse of a company that is perceived as a high-end but approachable visual effects production house that serves in the best interest of its clients from whatever background or country they are in. JUICE has a sincere intention of clear understanding of clients’ wishes and a genuine desire to offer smart solutions. JUICE believes in building solid bridges between cultures on top of which they can successfully build high quality CG campaigns. This philosophy resulted in multiple successful collaborations with clients like Mitsubishi, Huawei, Pepsi, Toyota, Dolby, Renault, Chevrolet and more….

JUICE has executed 10 successful campaigns for Japanese Mitsubishi clients since a few years now. But this great collaboration started with a ‘Martian’ challenge. The Mitsubishi client found an article on the VFX site Motionographer explaining JUICE’s post-production process on a short named ‘Ares – Our Greatest Adventure’, a trailer promoting the fictional mission in Ridley Scott’s The Martian. The piece also mentioned JUICE had recently opened a new office in Tokyo. Mitsubishi was looking for a well-experienced, capable CG studio, a studio that was already experienced working with the Asian market. The fit was perfect! And the projects started to flow in.

JUICE team received the brief from the client, which is an initial sketch of the story. They wanted a view of this new hybrid electric vehicle zipping around the roads, showing speed, comfort and superior handling. They had only four weeks to create a 30-second spot promoting a new Mitsubishi Phev. This car already was being produced in the factory but wouldn’t be physically seen until the Shanghai Motor Show in a month.

First, the director laid out clearly what assets were available to the team. In this case, they had a brief requiring an electric experience. Presenting a car in its ‘natural’ environment is a common idea. The real car was unavailable so as quickly as possible, they gathered a digital scan of the vehicle and had the CG team create a fully CG build of the car. Mitsubishi themselves may have provided this.

First priority – start with an inhouse director. This way you can ensure that the information flow and decision making is swift and uninterrupted. While director knows the crew and how to work flexibly in fast in the given conditions.

首要任务 —一优先任用内部导演。内部导演对团队成员知根知底，明白如何在目前的情况下迅速灵活应变，保证了决策和信息流通的畅通无阻。

As JUICE’s director Michał Misiński and one of the CG/VFX Supervisors were involved in the project since the early pitching process, it was possible to quickly adapt the technology to make the commercial happen in a short time. “We had a four-week deadline so the most efficient way was to do everything in CG. It’s also a great opportunity to play with the flow and camera movement to tell the story,” he says. Also, he had the CG team create some electrifying scenery for the car to drive through, perhaps inspired by TRON movie effects. Roads that visually conjure an air of freedom, light and ease of movement. Electric blue rails. Bringing these shots together with extra detail of the dashboard, the electric charge dials, tachometers and sleek views of chassis curves in a signature blue lighting. “We split this job into 2-3 lead artists and one supervisor who was taking care of the overall quality check,” says Misinski.

With two studios active on the spot, JUICE had one team building scenery and road assets while another created the vehicle. When the day finished in Poland, they handed the job across to the Tokyo studio, with full access to everything the European team had been working on, through the use of production management software like Shotgun. Then at the end of the Asian day, everything is available back in Poland. No downtime on this production. Shotgun cuts the overall production time down as well, with the reviews plugin as it makes it easy for the director to manage the whole international team and clearly express his vision.

The challenges seemed insurmountable, but using international assets, talent and close connection with the client, JUICE created a solid commercial with a strong story and delivered within a tight deadline and even under budget.

Today in the globally connected world – having the advantage of crew working both in Asia and Europe allows for seamless cooperation using time-differences as a vehicle for perpetual work. In this case the Poland crew in their evening can pass off to Japan crew, and visa-versa, creating a 24-hour studio engine.

在当今全球化的背景下，灵活运用亚欧团队位置的时间差能为工作室插上24小时的翅膀，正如三菱项目中波兰队和日本队的循环接力，飞速完成任务。

Projects that are fully created with the talent of a CG team allows for a lot of creative flexibility and freedom. The assets they create can also be held and repurposed, used in later projects for the client. Without an exterior, on-location requirement, the overall costs are also cut considerably.

“Often the decisions made in conjunction between the CGI artist and production specialist, benefit client and agency, while still delivering on the very tight deadline. And as we all know in today’s commercial world, times are not extending but constantly shrinking. Whatever solutions we might have to accommodate that – especially if they are in sync with cost saving, we believe them to be the future of approach to commercials,” says Adam Tunikowski, the CEO and co-Founder of JUICE.

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